Author: Giuseppe Primiero

Posted on

In Memoriam of Martin and Virginia Davis

It is with great sadness that we inform the HAPOC community of the death of Martin Davis, and of his wife Virginia, on January 1st 2023.

Martin Davis will be remembered as a great logician and computer scientist who lived through much of the US computer’s early history. Alongside Yuri Matijasevich, Hilary Putnam and Julia Robinson, he helped solve Hilbert’s 10th problem. He also made basic contributions to connect mathematical logic with computing, most notably through his influential book “Computability and Unsolvability” which is, still today, a classic.

It was our greatest pleasure and honor to have Martin as one of the keynote speakers at the very first HAPOC conference held in Ghent in 2011, where Virginia accompanied him. The title of his keynote was “Universality is Ubiquitous” – a talk based on one of Martin’s more historical works, “The universal computer” in which he argued for the significance of mathematical logic for the emergence of the first computers. In the very spirit of any HaPoC meeting, his viewpoint stimulated a heated debate with the historians present in the room. Martin did not mind debate and this was a very typical aspect of his friendly and open character. Later in 2018 Martin accepted another invitation by HaPoC to contribute at the Special Session organised every year as part of the Conference Computability in Europe, that year in Kiel (Germany): on that occasion he showed again his unfaltering enthusiasm for connecting the past and the present of computing with a talk titled “Turing’s Vision and Deep Learning”. On that occasion a toast was made to celebrate his 90th birthday.

Above all, we will remember Martin and Virginia as two people who stood out for their kindness, their integrity, their love for one another, and their generosity. Their memory will stay alive with all of us who try to live by the same ethos.

Martin and Virginia Davis at HaPoC1, Ghent 2011
Posted on

Call for Symposia: 17th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology – CLMPST 2023

The Commission for the History and Philosophy of Computing (HaPoC), as part of the Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology (DLMPST) makes a call for submissions of proposals for symposia to take place at the next CLMPST 2023 in Buenos Aires (Argentina).

List of topics of interest for the HaPoC commission (not limited to):

  • Historical and philosophical perspectives on computing knowledge, objects, and practices
  • Social, cultural, and pedagogical aspects of computing
  • Computing and the human sciences
  • Epistemological and ethical dimensions of computing
  • Impact of computing technologies
  • Proposals by South American scholars or focusing on South American computational practices are especially encouraged.

Submissions should be made following the instructions below. We recommend that interested participants get in touch with the HaPoC Commission as soon as possible, and no later than November 15th 2022. All questions about the commission should be directed to info@hapoc.org.

Important information

Symposia are groups of talks on a common theme. Each symposium consists of four to twelve papers.

In EasyChair – https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=clmpst2023 – please make a submission for (a) the symposium as a whole; and (b) each paper in the symposium (so, for example, for a four-paper symposium, you should make a total of five submissions).

(a) For the symposium as a whole, please provide an abstract with a general description of the format and the topic of the proposed symposium and its significance (up to 500 words), and suggest a symposium chair. Indicate to which congress section you submit the symposium (tick the appropriate box). After the abstract, please list the titles of the talks in the order they should appear at the conference. Please add the acronym “HaPoC” followed by the acronym for the symposium at the beginning of the title of the symposium (e.g., HaPoC-: ). The acronym will be used by the Programme Committee to keep the individual submissions in a proposal together during reviewing and when creating the conference programme.

(b) For each paper within a symposium, please submit a 500-word abstract (including references). Indicate to which congress section the symposium belongs (tick the appropriate box). Please add the acronym “HaPoC” followed by the acronym of the symposium at the beginning of the title of the talk (HaPoC-<Symposium acronym>: <Title of the individual talk>). The acronym will be used by the Programme Committee to keep the individual submissions in a proposal together during reviewing and when creating the conference program.

Note to symposium organisers: papers intended to be presented as parts of a symposium must be submitted by their respective authors. Symposium organisers should contact all symposium speakers in advance and make sure that they submit their abstracts by the submission deadline of 15 December 2022.

The symposium description is submitted by the symposium organiser by the same deadline. Please make sure that all parts of the submission are prepared for anonymous review and submitted to the same congress section (the same box is ticked in all of them). When submitting a symposium proposal, the EasyChair requires you to take the role of a “speaker“. This is for formal reasons only, and in no way precludes you from submitting a paper of your own (to that same symposium, to a different symposium, or a contributed paper). In this case, you will appear as a “speaker“ on 2 submissions, one of which must be the symposium proposal.

The allocated time for each symposium paper is 30 minutes. For instance, a symposium with 4 speakers is a 2 hour session (4 x 30 minutes). Note that if a symposium consists of more than 4 speakers, it might be split into two sessions due to coffee breaks in the programme.

Rules for multiple presentations

(a) Every corresponding author is allowed to submit only one individual or symposium paper as a “speaker”. (Organising a symposium does not count as being a “speaker”, despite the labelling in EasyChair.)

(b) Authors are permitted to be listed as non-corresponding co-authors of additional papers.

(c) The corresponding author of each paper as well as the organiser of a symposium must be registered as a participant at the Congress and present the paper in Buenos Aires.

All questions about submissions should be directed to the Congress Secretaries, Prof. Federico Pailos and Prof. Luis Urtubey, at secretariosclmpst2023@gmail.com

Important dates:

December 15, 2022 Deadline for symposia submissions
March 2023 Notifications of acceptance
March 2023 Congress registration opens
April 30, 2023 Deadline for early bird registrations
July 1, 2023 No more refunds for registration cancellations
July 24-29, 2023 17th CLMPST, University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires

Posted on

Grants for externally organised Events 2020

The HaPoC Council is pleased to announce a new funding stream for externally organised event that take place in 2020. We will provide up to two grants of 250USD to support research events that have a topic clearly related to history and philosophy of computing areas.

To apply for such funding, organisers are asked to send to info@hapoc.org the following documentation

– Details of the event, including website
– A 1-page document describing how the event relates to HaPoC
– Details of current and perspective funding, including the intended allocation of the HaPoC grant

For events taking place in the current year we welcome requests at any time, with decisions taken on a first come first served basis.
Organisers who are granted HaPoC support will be kindly asked to make this support clearly known on all communications related to the event, including website and eventual publications.

Posted on

First CfP HaPoP-5, 27 may 2020, Paris

*HaPoP 2020*

Fifth symposium on the History and Philosophy of programming
27 May 2020, Paris, France

Co-located with NewCrafts 2020, 28-29 May 2020

https://www.shift-society.org/hapop5/

In a society where computers have become ubiquitous, it is necessary to develop a deeper understanding of the nature of computer programs, not just from the technical viewpoint, but from a broader historical and philosophical perspective. A historical awareness of the evolution of programming not only helps to clarify the complex structure of computing, but it also provides an insight in what programming was, is and could be in the future. Philosophy, on the other hand, helps to tackle fundamental questions about the nature of programs, programming languages and programming as a discipline.

HaPoP 2020 is the fifth edition of the Symposium on the History and Philosophy of Programming, organised by HaPoC, Commission on the History and Philosophy of Computing. As in the previous editions, we are convinced that an interdisciplinary approach is necessary for understanding programming with its multifaceted nature. As such, we welcome participation by researchers and practitioners coming from a diversity of backgrounds, including historians, philosophers, computer scientists and professional software developers.

/Programming as an art, a craft or a science/

This edition of the symposium will be colocated with NewCrafts, an international software development conference for professional developers who care about quality code and improving their practices. In recent years, NewCrafts featured many talks on software craftsmanship, programming paradigms, architecture, but also ethics and philosophy and history of computing.

To initiate an inspiring conversation between the NewCrafts and HaPoP communities, we are particularly looking for talk proposals that discuss the question in how far programming can/has been/should be understood as an art, a craft and/or a science and what that implies both for the practice of programming as well as for our understanding of computer programs. We may not be able to answer this question, but we believe it will lead to useful insights about the nature of programs and programming.

/Selected topics of interest for the symposium/

Possible and in no way exclusive questions of relevance to this symposium are:

Can/has been/should be programming understood as an art, a craft and/or a science?
Are we getting better at writing programs that solve the given problem?
Is programming a specialist discipline, or will everyone in the future be a programmer?
What are the different scientific paradigms and research programmes developed through the history of computer programming?
Is it possible to eliminate errors from computer programs?
What is a program? How did the notion of a program change throughout the history?
How are programs and abstractions born, used and understood?
What was and is the relationship between hardware and software developments?
How did theoretical computer science (lambda-calculus, logics, category theory) influence the development of programming languages and vice versa?
What are the novel and most interesting approaches to the design of programs?
What is a correct program? Historical and philosophical reflections on issues in formal specification, type checking and model checking.
What is the nature of the relationship between algorithms and programs?
What legal and socio-economical issues are involved in the creation, patenting and free-distribution of programs?
How do we understand the multi-faceted nature of programs combining syntax, semantics and physical implementation?
How is programming to be taught?

/Dates, format and submissions/

For the symposium, we invite submission of two-page extended abstracts (including footnotes, but excluding references). Accepted papers will be given a 30 minute presentation slot including discussion. As with the previous editions, we also intend to submit a proposal for a special issue of a suitable journal for publication of full papers based on the symposium presentations.
Important dates

Submission deadline: *1 March 2020*
Author notification: *1 April 2020*
HaPoP symposium: *27 May 2020*

/Important links/

Submission web site: https://easychair.org/account/signin?l=PRJGt7pZiwCv3QpOfMAmKd#
Financial support: Coming soon
Registraton site: Coming soon

/Program committee/

Liesbeth De Mol (co-chair, CNRS – UMR 8163 STL Université de Lille)
Tomas Petricek (co-chair – University of Kent)
Arnaud Bailly (Aleryo)
Martin Carlé (Ionean University)
Andrea Magnorsky (Independent)
Ursula Martin (Oxford University)
Baptiste Mélès (CNRS, UMR 7117 Archives Henri-Poincaré
Pierre Mounier-Kuhn (CNRS & Université de Paris-Sorbonne)
Romeu Moura (Independent)
Mark Priestley (Independent)
Giuseppe Primiero (University of Milan)

/Registration/

Program committee of the symposium, as well as registration information will be announced soon. Please check this page regularly for updates. We will be also sharing updates via the HaPoC Comission web page (register to get updates via email) and on Twitter at @HaPoComputing.

HaPoP-5 co-chairs are Liesbeth De Mol and Tomas Petricek. If you have any questions regarding suitability of a topic or format of the extended abstract, please contact Liesbeth at liesbeth.de-mol@univ-lille.fr or Tomas at tomas@tomasp.net. For quick questions, you can also use @tomaspetricek on Twitter.

Posted on

HaPoC5: Special Issue

Computing in the world: A historical and philosophical analysis

Call for Papers
for a special issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (ISR)

Guest Editor:
Mario Verdicchio
Researcher, School of Engineering, University of Bergamo, Italy

Journal Editor:
Willard McCarty
Professor emeritus, Dept. of Digital Humanities, King’s College, London, UK

Over the last half-century, computing has become ubiquitous in many parts of the world and in most if not all fields of endeavour. Almost no aspect of our lives remains unaffected. It is again time to take stock, but this time in such a way as to bring out and bring together differences and commonalities across the full range of disciplines. For this issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (published by Taylor & Francis, https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/yisr20/current) the editors seek to publish articles in the physical, social and human sciences that demonstrate in their conjunction the genuinely meaningful interdisciplinarity of the digital machine.

As a methodological tool, the computer is obviously interdisciplinary – its ubiquity in research of all kinds makes the case. However, it has quite different effects from one discipline to the next. By design, a computer requires input in discrete binary terms and so raises the question of how this requirement differentially affects each area of work. Furthermore, we may argue, the remarkable, proven adaptability of computers to widely varying problems, degrees of complexity and experimental, even imaginative application evokes tendencies and affects practices differentially across the disciplines in which they are used. Some disciplines have become largely computational, or grown a computational branch; others, for which the tradeoff is less attractive, are resistant. Why? Compare, for example, physics, biology, sociology, literary studies, the arts.

Thus we welcome contributions from scholars wanting to participate in the debate concerning the effects of computers on their disciplines. We welcome articles with a particular focus on the relation between the conceptual and methodological framework of an area of expertise and the abstractions, analogies, encodings, models, simplifications and translations imposed by the data and operations of computing. Broad statements of what can and cannot be automated, and how automation affects research, are far less telling and useful than analyses based on examples of work in specific fields. We are looking for arguments backed up by details. Historical and philosophical approaches are of particular interest.

Timeline

Deadline for 300-word abstract submission: January 31st, 2020.
Abstracts notification: March 1st, 2020.
Deadline for 8000-word paper submission: June 28th, 2020.
Papers notification: September 28th, 2020.
Deadline for final version: December 31st, 2020.
Special issue release: 2021, Q1.

All correspondence to:
Mario Verdicchio
mario.verdicchio@unibg.it

Posted on

workshop Formalization of proof, Formalization of programs, 18-19 december 2019, Paris

*Workshop announcement*

FORMALIZATION OF PROOFS, FORMALIZATION OF PROGRAMS,

Paris, December, 18-19 2019

Campus Lourcine, 1, rue de la Glacière (RER : Port Royal; Metro, ligne 7 : Les Gobelins; Metro, ligne 6 : Glacière)

Bâtiment 2, Salle 02-Gérard Lyon-Caen.

https://programme.hypotheses.org/ffium-programme-colloquium-formalization-of-proofs-formalization-of-programs

*Mercredi 18 décembre 2019*

9h30-10h45: Ursula Martin, What can studies of crowdsourcing tell us about mathematical practice?

10h45-11h: Coffe Break

11h-12h15: Gilles Dowek: The absoluity of logical truth challenged by proof formalization.

12h15- 14h00: Lunch

14h00-15h15: Gisele Secco, Diagrams and Programs in the First Proof of the Four-Color Theorem

15h15-16h30: Raymond Turner, Some Instances of Abstraction in Mathematics and Computer Science

16h30-16h45: Coffe Break

16h45-18h30: Table Ronde “What can be formalized?” with contributions from: Simone Martini, Baptiste Mélès, Maël Pégny, Maté Szabo

*Jeudi 19 décembre 2019*

9h30-10h45: Cliff Jones, Formalisation and Proof in Computing: A Personal View

10h45-11h00: Coffe Break

11h00-12h15: Assia Mahboubi, Verified Computations in Mathematical Proofs

12h15- 14h00: Lunch

14h00-15h15: Giuseppe Primiero, Value-sensitive co-design for resilient software systems

15h15-15h30: Coffe Break

15h30-16h45: Alberto Naibo, Formalizing constructions and proofs in Euclid’s geometry

16h45-18h: Cyrille Imbert, Vincent Ardourel, Program verification in the empirical science: formal methods for all?

The workshop intends to reconsider the relations or lack thereof between Computer science and mathematics. Whereas, originally, mathematics was used to provide a disciplinary identity to computing, today, this is clearly no longer the case, and this makes urgent to rethink the possible relations between the two fields. The workshop aim to do it by studying notions and practices of formalization and computation in both contexts.

In order to register, please send a mail to maelpegny@gmail.com before 13 december 2019. *Registration is free but necessary.*

The workshop results from a collaboration between two ANR research projects:
the FFIUM Project (https://sites.google.com/view/ffium/accueil)
and the PROGRAMme project (https://programme.hypotheses.org/).

Organizors: Liesbeth De Mol, Gerhard Heinzmann, Alberto Naibo, Marco Panza.

Posted on

Travel Grants to CLMPST2019

The Commission for the History and Philosophy of Computing has two grants to support travel of young and/or unfunded researchers to CLMPST2019 in Prague. Requirements are that

1. the applicants are PhD Students without funding and
2. that their research area is close to the History and Philosophy of Computing.

Each grant is for a total of 250USD.

We would like to receive applications via email at the address

info@hapoc.org

stating briefly position, affiliation and attaching (if available) the abstract of the contribution at CLMPST19, with a brief explanation of how it relates to the HaPoC area of interest.
Applications should be received no later than July 26th. Applications will be considered as they are received.